


A Heart in New York

by Todesengel



Category: FAKE
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-15
Updated: 2011-08-15
Packaged: 2017-10-22 15:35:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/239594
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Todesengel/pseuds/Todesengel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It starts with a dead kid on Bleecker who has his card in his pocket.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Heart in New York

They'd called him down to Bleecker and Seventh because the kid had one of his cards stuck between two fake ids and a credit card for one Quincy Richards. He hadn't recognized the face when they'd shown him the body in the morgue, but when he'd looked at pictures on the ids, he'd had a flash of painful recognition, although even then the name and context of this dead kid eluded him until he woke up with a start that night and remembered that this was Larry-with-the-drug-addict-brother, one of Bikky's friends. Or acquaintances. Or maybe even just an accomplice who helped him rob the Korean market on 127th and Lennox, and wasn't that a happy thought to have at midnight?

He stayed up the rest of the night worrying about what kind of a parent he was when he let his kid go out and shoplift; and even though he always paid Mr. Hong for anything the kids took, that wasn't really the point, now was it? He'd have to hope that this was either a phase Bikky was going through or that, at some point, he'd manage to knock enough sense into the kid's head before he was getting that three a.m. phone call telling him they had his kid in lockdown and the proverbial smoking gun.

God he wished Dee was here, if only because it was easier to avoid Dee's half-hearted, sleep-dazed attempts to get into his pants than to think about the many and varied ways Bikky could screw up both their lives.

He questioned Bikky in the morning, over a carefully planned meal of French toast that made Bikky acquiescent and free with his tongue.

"Couple of rumors." The words were muddled with the bread and syrup. "But a lot of kids run away all the time."

"Find out more." Bikky nodded and grabbed his bag and headed out to what Ryo could only hope was school, and Ryo stopped him at the door.

"Be careful," he said, and he didn't mean about nosing around. Bikky looked at him with eyes that made him feel like he was the child here, and then the moment passed, and Bikky was thundering down the stairs shouting back, "of course."

He went back to the crime scene. Stared at the fluttering yellow tape and thought about boundaries and jurisdiction because life wasn't like cop shows. Hell, cop shows weren't even a pale reflection of reality, any more, all wrong in the details and too right in the broad strokes that painted humanity as brutal creatures that had better clothing than their ancient ancestors but no other real differences. Was it his case because the kid had come from his precinct, where he was supposed to keep him safe and had failed, or the sixth's because the body had been found on their beat? Who was responsible for the dead, here?

He managed to get a temporary transfer and a temporary partner from the sixth, a guy named Joe, who'd been divorced and was older and stained in a permanent way; stubble on his chin, bags under his eyes, fingertips turned yellow from years of smoking. He complained about alimony payments and lived on Long Island, and they went out drinking, once, to a cop bar near NYU where the T.V. was always tuned to sports and the only part of the paper allowed past the door was the crossword.

Ryo liked him, in a dull sort of way.

One week, then two, and he spent a lot of time sleeping at Dee's because it was a hell of a lot closer than his own place. Closer and yet empty most of the time, Dee having taken on the role of Bikky's watchdog with tacit understanding and an unspoken promise to not further his corruption. Meals caught on the fly, stale coffee in an unfamiliar squad room, soggy sandwiches from an all-night deli.

New York at its worst.

New York at its finest.

It made him tired, and the bone-weary fatigue didn't ease even after they caught the perp and booked him and moved from the streetwork to the paperwork that was just as much a part of being a cop as anything else.

"Heading home, McLane?" Joe had the same tired eyes, the same tired shuffle, and Ryo nodded slowly.

"Yeah, going back to take up space in my own precinct."

Joe grunted to himself, and pushed the paperwork on his desk from one side to the other. "You're a good cop," he said at last. "If you want to stay down here, I got no objections."

Ryo shrugged and he was too tired to be touched by the offer. "Sorry."

"Just saying."

He fell asleep on the nine as he headed home, missed his stop at fifty-ninth and seventy-ninth, where he'd planned to pick up some real food, and didn't wake up until a kid in a Columbia sweatshirt jostled him at one-sixteen. Ryo stepped out into the station, which was filled with the barely breathable area of subway and construction that never seemed to be finished, and he was struck by the high, wild urge to just pack it all in. Move away from this city that was suddenly too loud, too busy, too big for him; go west to a small town in the middle of nowhere were he wouldn't have to worry about the statistical probability that it'd be his kid lying on a cold slab, unrecognizable from the violence. Go west where he wouldn't have to worry about fending off another guy who made him wonder and question all the assumptions about himself that he'd taken for granted.

He stopped in at the Italian grocery -- one of the ubiquitous bodegas that filled the street-front around Columbia, not the glossy market that had take up residence down the block at one-ten -- before catching the cross-town that would let him off a little bit closer to his place. Tiny tubs of pre-made meals -- salad and antipasti and something vaguely Mediterranean. And a handful of Cadbury eggs from the box near the register, grabbed without thinking because that was where they always were, which didn't strike him as odd until he counted the months and realized it was February -- far too early for these.

They filled him with a sort of odd longing, a swelling of affection that died slowly on the long, jolting bus ride and the plodding ascent to his door.

God he was tired.

His keys stuck, a little, and that was probably what alerted Dee, who opened the door wearing his apron. There was a streak of something white on his forehead, and when he smiled it made his teeth look yellow by comparison.

"Hey man. We missed you," Dee was saying as he took the bags, and the entire apartment smelled like beef stock and garlic. "I saw the papers today. Good work."

"Wasn't really me." Ryo let himself be pulled in by momentum, by habit, and he almost turned into the kitchen before Dee shooed him over to the sofa. It felt unfamiliar for a long moment, and then like the old friend it was, conformed once more to his body. "They're good, down at the sixth."

"Yeah."

Clattering from the kitchen, like the clattering of the subway on its rails. Something cold pushed into his hand, and it wasn't the beer he expected but a tall glass that smelled of summer and lime. "Dinner'll be ready in a minute," Dee murmured, and his hand was cold, too, where it touched Ryo's brow.

"Bikky?"

"In his room." Dee, perched on the edge of the sofa, one foot on the ground, and that was another odd familiarity, a thing taken for granted when it shouldn't have been. "Working on an English paper."

"Yeah, right."

"Honest." A flashed grin and then a beeping called Dee away, though he turned at the door. "He's doing all right."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah."

Again the odd swelling affection, although this time Ryo could pinpoint the source. He closed his eyes, breathed out some of the tension and let his head rest against the back of the sofa. New York breathed beyond his windows, the heartbeat of traffic and life and noise that he didn't hear until he listened for it. New York breathed in his kitchen, too, a dull murmuring of _'now where is'_ and _'two cups? I thought it was one'_ that also went unheard unless looked for.

New York at its worst.

New York at its finest.


End file.
